Water flowed on Mars between as little as 2 billion to 2.5 billion years ago.much earlier than previously thought, data from a new study reveal.
Researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) used NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to determine that liquid water on the Martian surface left behind salt minerals as recently as 2 billion years ago. Chloride salt deposits were left behind when the ice water evaporated flowing across the Martian landscape.
Salt minerals were first discovered 14 years ago by NASA’s Mars Odyssey orbiter, which launched in 2001. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), which has higher-resolution instruments than Odyssey, launched in 2005 and since then he has been studying salts derived from water, among many other features of Mars.
Until now, it was thought Martian surface water evaporated about 3 billion years ago, but the new results advance it by as much as a billion years.